‘The Celebrity Apprentice,’ Season 5, Season Premiere: TV Recap

Hello there! For all of you feeling a little bit Linundated by all the hoops coverage here recently, let’s take a little break from Jeremania to recap the premiere of the fifth season of “Celebrity Apprentice”!

You may remember Donald Trump from such other reality shows as “The Apprentice” (seasons one through six) and “The Race for the Republican Nomination.” Well, he’s back in full effect here, pursed lips, furrowed brows, forward-swept ‘do and all, ready to put another slate of stars-with-an-asterisk through a gold-plated and fine-grain-leather-upholstered version of hell.

Once again, he’s flanked by his spawn, Ivanka and Donald Jr.; the family resemblance is remarkable, except Ivanka still has all of her own hair and actually makes the Trump features kind of attractive, while Don Jr. just looks like his louder and more charismatic father’s midday shadow — a darker, fainter, more flickery silhouette of the original. You keep expecting him to cringe and wring his hands nervously whenever Daddy Don looks in his direction.

I’m joined in this recap by my friend and supplemental snarkist Kai Ma, managing editor for the Asian American Writers Workshop and longtime reality teevee buff. Because when watching a show like “Celebrity Apprentice,” too much bitchiness is never enough. Also, Kai actually met Ivanka when she was writing for New York mag: “She’s very poised. Very well trained.” We have some Trumpological expertise on board!

The show opens with a little montage of contestants talking about the charities they’re supporting with this exercise in self-humiliation. Yes. This is for charity. Not a desperate attempt to revive flagging careers at all.

“Look, they’re all fakewalking to their big meeting at Lincoln Center!” says Kai. The contestants put on their best “I’m very serious about winning” faces as they ascend various steps and walk down random halls toward their appointment with destiny. And Donald Trump.

Standing on stage at Avery Fisher Hall, the assembled cast is not immediately impressive. “It’s a bunch of D-list has-beens,” says Kai. Then adds: “And George Takei!”

So we have some hopes for George. But from the outset, it’s obvious that the funnest people to watch are going to be Debbie Gibson (Kai: “Surprisingly, she looks kind of tough. I mean, I’m getting here that you would not want to eff with Debbie Gibson”), Aubrey O’Day (Kai: “Who is this dimwit again? And what happened to her face? She looks like someone’s cartoon version of Lindsay Lohan”) and, of course, Victoria Gotti, whose skull-painted-with-latex demeanor and Gambino family credentials instantly marks her as the season’s most-feared contestant.

Comedian Lisa Lampanelli calls it out first: “Victoria Gotti, I’m totally scared of you.” Really, who wouldn’t be? There are mythological depictions of the afterlife built around creatures that resemble Victoria Gotti.

The Donald, meanwhile, points out that Lisa isn’t exactly a shrinking violet herself. “Lisa, when I was roasted by Comedy Central, ya really killed me,” he says, pursing his lips. No grudges? We’ll see.

Lampanelli adds that she has another target in her sights. “I think George Takei’s got it coming,” she says. “Takei, I’m gunning for you, bitch.”

Takei’s quick to put up his deflector shields. “I’ve got my eye on you too, Lampanelli,” he retorts. “My loins are girded.” His loins are girded on kill!

“I don’t even know what the heck that means,” mutters Arsenio. Neither do we. But it sounds impressive. Let’s put a pin in that one as a potential beef to watch.

As the New York Philharmonic plays the Celeb Apprentice theme song, the action moves off to the planning rooms of the two teams — divvied up, per Trumpian tradition, into men versus women.

The men all seem to be wearing various shades of lavender. Is that this season’s big color? Seriously, lavender ties, shirts, accent pocket squares. Ferrigno. Jilette. The exception of course being Paul Teufel Sr., who sports a classic-blue stoner’s jean jacket. He’s basically a moustache with arms anyway.

They have to choose a name. The name suggestions all pretty much suck wind: Carolla comes up with Team Back Hair, the Trumpeteers and the Honey Badgers. Clay Aiken does not like Honey Badgers. (“Are you kidding me? Mr. Trump does not suffer childishness,” he says. “We have a lot of frat boys here.” Clay, try not to get stuffed into a trash bin by series end, okay?)

“What about ‘Galactic Force’? ‘Galactic Power’?” says Takei. The other contestants shift uncomfortably. (“Do we have to pretend we like ‘Star Trek’?” says Carolla, off camera. “I had neighbors who were Trekkies. They were alcoholics.”)

Just when it seems like no name is going to get a unanimous consensus, someone suggests…Unanimous. So, in a deft feat of meta-nomenclature, they decide to call themselves Unanimous. (Anything to get out of the room, says Dee Snider. “That name was definitely the last chick in the bar at the end of the night.”)

Over to the girls.

The ladies are impressively tight already, with a bubbly repartee going that the men might envy. Although Cheryl Tiegs gets a callout here, with an off-camera in which she describes herself as “very much a loner.” Is this foreshadowing? Maybe!

Naming is a hard nut for the women’s team too. “Ballbusters,” “Prowess” and “Bad News Babes” all die in committee. Teresa suggests an Italian term that no one except her and Victoria Gotti can pronounce. In the scrum, someone — Aubrey O’Day? — suggests “We all have such fabulous hair — can we do something with that?”

This draws a snort from Kai: “Half of them are wearing extensions.”

They end up converging on Debbie Gibson’s musical suggestion, Forte. “It means strong,” she explains. It’s also Italian! So, Teresa Giudice doesn’t have to flip any tables.

The women then decide on a project manager, which ends up being model turned philanthropist Patricia Velasquez, mostly because she volunteers. Everyone’s okay with that, because it sort of sucks to be the number-one manager out of the gate — everyone’s going to be rooting for you to fail and have the unceremonious honor of being the first contestant dumped from the show.

On the men’s side, everyone is quite aware of how crappy it is to own the first project. No one’s volunteering to step into the line of fire. Carolla decides to play mediator, and starts suggesting criteria for the guys’ choice of first project manager: “Maybe there are some people universally qualified to do whatever this task is going to be,” he suggests. “Paul might be better at a specific one…” — suggesting, essentially, that Teutel Sr. is probably not the right pick for the gig. Teutel, on the other hand, takes this as a nomination.

“I ran a business for 28 years,” he says. “I’ll do it. I really don’t care. At some point I have to do it anyhow.”

Teutel has arms like tree trunks. He looks like he could tie a knot in Clay Aiken. And with that, Unanimous has its first leader.

They all head to the boardroom to confront The Donald and hear their first mission. Donald interrogates them on their choice of names and project managers, and then announces that one of Team Unanimous’s members — racing king Marco Andretti — has had to pull out of the show, due to the death of a close friend and teammate, and is being replaced by his dad, retired racer Michael Andretti. This doesn’t look to change the balance of power, unless the first task involves parking-lot doughnuts.

But no: Their mission is to make and sell sandwiches. The team that scores the most money in receipts and tips will win all of the cash scored by both teams for their project manager’s charity. “It’s a lawt of money,” intones Trump. It’s yuuuuge.

Assessing each team’s chances of victory, Kai puts her money on the girls. “They just seem so much more organized and together, which makes me upset, because I have an issue with Tia,” she says. “Tia dated Costas Mandylor, and Costas and David Lee Roth were basically how I knew I was heterosexual. I’m going to flat out say now that I refuse to like her.”

So Kai is rooting for the guys. And the guys do have a plan. “You wanna create excitement,” says project manager Paul. “If there’s guys with sleeveless t-shirt standing around, that’s excitement. And I could get a hold of my shop, get half a dozen bikes to roll down in front of the store.” So Lou and Paul are going to stand outside flexing, and Penn Jillette’s going back to his roots and play midway barker. “I come from carny trash,” he boasts. Sounds like a show! But will it move sandwiches?

Then Teutel drops a bomb. “We’re gonna win this. I can call in some guys to donate money — guys who never let me down before….I’m gonna get us half a million dollars.”

On the girls side, things are more structured and team-centric. Velasquez has the ladies more or less in line, offering up a similar carnivalesque concept — but then Deborah Gibson suggests they go with more of a VIP velvet-rope affair. They’ll turn their café into an exclusive “club” — hot ladies out front, hot sandwiches inside. Velasquez likes it. Victoria Gotti thinks this idea should sleep with the fishes: “If everybody’s outside, who’s gonna be inside makin’ sandwiches?”

“That woman just seems like a miserable person,” says Kai. “She’s a total sociopath. Are you going to write that I said that? I don’t want to end up in an unmarked grave.”

Onscreen, Lampanelli concurs: “I won’t screw with Gotti. You know why. No horses head in my bed. I don’t care if she doesn’t show up for work, she’s gonna get an A+ from me.”

Meanwhile, in all the discussion about who the most “recognizable” members of the team are — the “outside” girls — Aubrey O’Day is feeling left out. “You know, I’ve been part of double-platinum girl group Danity Kane and the reality is I can run circles around most people here here. Them underestimating me is probably not the best idea, because out of all the people here, I have the most Twitter followers.”

“This chick is delusional,” says Kai. Insanity Kane!

Team Unanimous has headed to Café Metro, New York’s favorite upscale bodega chain, to prep their Circus of the Stars sandwich strategy. Beef two emerges! Paul is not a George Takei fan. “I think George is a nice guy, a quiet guy, but I like to be around aggressive people,” he says. “I think it pushes you into a higher energy mode. And George is not that kind of guy.” Whoa, Paul, you’re beaming down into stereotypical territory there. But it gets worse: He starts calling Takei “Star Trek.” As in, “Where’s my man Star Trek? Did he wander off into space somewhere?”

Fortunately, Takei, who might be having William Shatner flashbacks at this point, is not about to take any of Teutel’s B.S. “Paul is a Hell’s Angel guy, he has tattoos all up his arms, and I don’t know where else on his body,” he says. “He’s not the kind of guy who inspires you to do your best.” Hey, George, come on, bring it harder. WWSD? (What Would Sulu Do?)

But the test of Paul’s success isn’t going to be about how he motivates his men. It’s going to be whether he can deliver on his crazy promise of five hundred large in charitable donations. “I might have bit off a little more than I can chew here,” he acknowledges. Well, let’s see!

Over at Team Forte, Patricia Velasquez has been doing a mega call-a-thon trying to get people to commit to bringing bread over to Forte’s Celebrity Café. “I was calling every person in my phone book,” she says. “Ex-lovers…everybody!”

Victoria Gotti is also on the phone non-stop — with her contractors, her agent, and other Gotti entourage members, talking about things not at all related to the mission at hand, or even the show. “What’s up with that?” says Lampanelli. More foreshadowing!

Then the women head over to their own Café Metro outlet, where they start the work necessary to get their celebwiches made — slicing tomatoes and meat, simmering Teresa Giudices’s special secret-recipe red roasted peppers, and separating slices of cheese off of a giant industrial stack of fromage. The latter job has been assigned to Cheryl Tiegs, who apparently has found it a challenge akin to doing Rubik’s Cube blindfolded, with your feet.

“Cherly is a sweetheart, but she definitely has a lower…energy about her,” says Debbie Gibson. “That doesn’t fly in a kitchen where you have to separate 800 pieces of cheese.”

Cut to Tiegs, turning slowly to the camera with a goofy grin on her face. Don’t you know Debbie Gibson basically called you an airhead, Cheryl? Oops, not until this episode airs.

Meanwhile, Victoria Gotti, to no one’s surprise, doesn’t show up for work. “Maybe she woke up in the trunk of a Lincoln Continental,” says Tia Carrere, getting in her best — and very nearly only — line of the night. Gotti eventually shows up, claiming some kind of optical accident: “I tore my cornea, or maybe my retina,” she says. “It’s better now.” The undead have impressive regenerative abilities!

The actual Deli Duel between Unanimous and Forte almost comes off as an anticlimax. Both sides score victories — Unanimous gets a team of, uh, “professional dancers” to come and actually pay for the privilege of hanging out in front of their store (Sample line from an impressively endowed and poorly supported member of the dance troupe: “If you guys buy sandwiches, I’ll keep jumping up and down like this!”). Velasquez’s mass dialing attack seems to be paying off: Wyclef Jean shows up at Forte’s store and drops $15K, and Russell Simmons comes in with a check for $10,000 and a request for a vegan hero.

Both teams are invited to send a rep to “The Rachael Ray Show” with their best sandwich, for a yum-off judged by Ray herself. The winning ‘wich gets their team an unspecified bonus sum of money, donated by Café Metro itself.

And then it’s time for the final reckoning: Who cut the mustard, and who cut the cheese?

Asked which teammembers did the least to help out the cause, project manager Patricia cites Cheryl Tiegs and Victoria Gotti. (Venezuelans have no fear!). Project manager Paul offers up George Takei and Arsenio Hall.

“Of course, the two people of color,” snorts Kai.

Surprisingly culturally sensitive Adam Carolla concurs: “Donald, you put Paul on the spot to choose the weak links, and he picks three minorities.” Wait, three? He’s saying that because Takei is gay, right? Apparently!

But Paul is still bringing it to our man George. “There are a lot of strong personalities here, and he’s a meeker person by nature,” he says. “And I think it might be a little overwhelming for him.”

Everyone’s a little WTF?. “This guy, he was a leader for the gay movement!” says Trump. And then Takei steps to the challenge.

“I was taken aback when you used that word meek,” he says. “I had to fight for a lot of things in my life — I grew up behind barbed war in an internment camp.”

Teutel knows he’s crossed the line. He turns and apologizes. Takei graciously accepts, but I don’t think this beef is over.

There’s a cliffhanger break as Trump is about to announce the winner of the Rachael Ray taste test, and then we’re back. Trump announces that Unanimous’s sandwich has won, and will get an additional $35,000 added to their total. The ladies are obviously crushed, but Velasquez is still confident they’ve beaten the men. And why not? She ran the register. She’s seen her team’s numbers.

“The women’s team set an all-time record for the first task of the series,” says Don Jr. “They raised $126,962.”

As the women cheer, Trump calls that a “fantastic amount of money” — and then turns to Ivanka for the men’s total.

“The men’s team raised $332,120,” she says. “Add $35K to that, and you get $367,120.”

The men have more than doubled the record-setting total of the women! What gives! It turns out that Paul’s “guys” came through. “I raised $305,000 of that from one guy,” he says.

“Holy crap, who wrote that check?” shouts Kai. We may never know!

In any case, Teutel’s promise of half a million to charity pretty much comes through — he’s earned the Make-a-Wish Foudnation over $494,000 in one go. And now Forte has to offer up a sacrificial lamb. We all know where it’s going.

Good prediction. Patricia brings Victoria Gotti and Cheryl Tiegs to the boardroom, and even though Gotti’s lack of enthusiasm, lateness and general uselessness during the mission gets called out, well, you know, Gambino! She could fail to show up on camera for the rest of the series and still win this.

And so, Trump does his thing. “Cheryl, you’re an amazing woman,” he says. “But for the purposes of what we have to do here…you’re fired. You’re fantastic. Now get out of here.” Cheryl out!

And we’re out too! Until next week, that’s the recap.

***

The Tao Jones Index Must-click quick-hits from across Asia and Asian America

Looking for a few good pens: My recap partner Kai Ma’s organization, the Asian American Writers Workshop, is seeking freelance writers and writing fellows who can help tell the story of the Asian diaspora and the Asian American New York experience.